We live in a world where we are surrounded by advertising and everywhere we turn brands are attempting to sell us myriad products, whether through celebrity endorsements or sponsored social media. Whatever you make of it, advertising continues to be a powerful driver for consumer behaviour. Despite it permeating into everyday life, consumers are becoming increasingly apathetic towards the second biggest advertising category (behind TV): display.

As technology evolves, consumers are leaping on the opportunity to block and bypass advertising. According to a study conducted by YouGov in partnership with the UK Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), 22% of British adults used an ad blocking software in February 2016, a 4% rise from October 2015.

For this to happen, brands and advertisers must finally abandon the mass market approach – the one which has seen advertisers favour breadth of reach with little concern for personalised targeting. Serving the same generic display ad based on cookies, an imperfect targeting tool at best, simply doesn’t cut it in the age of AI-led personalisation expounded by the likes of Google and Facebook. In an increasingly mobile-first, personalised environment, advertisers face an uphill battle to drive engagement and deliver a positive RoI.

Shift from online to mobile

This broad-brush approach and lack of targeted strategy that has come to define display advertising has seen a rise in consumer apathy. Why should I bother to listen if the brand hasn’t taken the time to listen to me?

However, all is not lost. For some time, mobile has promised a sea change for marketers. With mobile, advertisers can deliver rich and interactive content to a screen which researchers say we check as much as 85 times a day in the UK. And by adding location into the mix, advertising can be much more engaging and personalised based on the consumers’ exact location. The difference between an offer for £5 off clothes at a shop over the road versus that same offer when browsing on a smartphone back in the office is enormous.

Despite these advances, the industry has struggled to capitalise on this opportunity. Instead, they are replicating the display advertising model in the mobile world, resulting in similar issues around targeting and ad-blocking.

The power of mobile lies in context. Consumers increasingly expect context-driven experiences from their mobile devices and marketers who do not deliver it can risk alienating their key audiences. A depersonalised mobile ad experience is little better than display advertising ‘on a mobile’.

Putting the context into mobile advertising

Today’s consumers are no longer interested in seeing a brand merely displayed on their phone. They want value; when it comes to mobile advertising, context is king. A targeted contextual approach will not only see consumers more likely to engage with brands but it will also see offers trump brand loyalty.

For example, a daily commuter is standing on a platform awaiting the 18:05 home to Margate at Kings Cross St. Pancras, one of the most visited commuter hubs in all of London, and their train is delayed. At that moment, that passenger, a loyal M&S customer, may be idly flipping through texts on their mobile, any number of brands with a presence at that station (WH Smith? Waitrose? Oliver Bonas?) could benefit from an ‘immediacy’ strategy as a way to lure them away from M&S and into their own store: a proximity marketing strategy that employs beacons to attract footfall into their railway locations.

By using beacon technology, brands are better able to target consumers at a time when ads will be most relevant to them, but also in a timely way. On average, commuters on buses spend as much as 17-18 minutes of consumer dwell time, or time that they are idle. Brands and agencies should, therefore, use this context to generate relevant offers during periods of high dwell, i.e. during their commute, but also when they are likely to be most responsive and in the right location to be served those messages. As a recent IAB/PwC UK study found, commuters on average spend 43% of their time accessing their screens, yet despite this, click-through in mobile advertising averages out at less than 1%, so making users aware of these offers with the power of beacon technology could see advertisers increase click-through rates by as much as 5-10%.

Context is king

Advertisers today face a dual challenge: diminishing return on investment along with an increasingly disengaged public. The ubiquitous availability of ad blockers has seen consumers reject ads at an increasing pace as advertisers have failed to keep with the demands of today’s consumers.

But the shift from online to mobile advertising could indicate a brighter dawn for advertisers; this new era presents an opportunity for advertisers to make away with the ‘guess work’ approach, so often favoured in a bid to achieve the desired reach, and usher in an era of personalisation based on context.

 

By John Kennedy, CEO of Proxama

 

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